They followed Warriner into the room, and Charnock closed the door.
"Didn't you know?" he asked. "I went to find him."
"No," she replied, utterly bewildered. "It seems strange; but Miranda is very secret. A little unkind, perhaps," and then her voice went up almost in a scream as Warriner turned towards her. "Ralph! Is that Ralph?"
"Yes, yes, it's Ralph," said Warriner, and all the time he spoke, he trotted and hopped and danced about the room. "Ralph Warriner, to be sure; a little bit aged, eh, Jane Holt? Little bit musty? Been lyin' too long in the churchyard at Scilly--bound to alter your looks that,--what?" He skipped over to the writing table and began with a seeming aimlessness to pull out the drawers. "Where's Miranda? Does she know her lovin' husband's here? Why don't she come? Tell me that, Jane Holt!" He made a quick, and to Charnock an unintelligible, movement at the writing table, shut up a drawer with a bang, and the next moment he had a hand tight upon Jane Holt's wrist. "Where's Miranda? Quick!" and he shook her arm fiercely, but with a sly look towards Charnock; his other hand he thrust into his pocket. Charnock just got a glimpse of a sheet of paper clenched in the fist. Warriner withdrew his hand from his pocket empty. He had stolen something from the writing drawer. But what it was Charnock could not guess, nor did he think it wise, in view of Warriner's excitement, to ask.
"Miranda's at Gibraltar," said Miss Holt, quite alarmed by the man's extravagance. "I told you, she is ill."
Warriner waited to hear no more. He dropped her arm. "At Gibraltar," he said, and ran out of the room across the patio. Charnock followed him immediately. "He must not go alone," he cried over his shoulder to Miss Holt, but the excuse was only half of his motive. Passion, resentment, jealousy,--these too ordered him and he obeyed.
Charnock came up with Warriner at the railway station. The train did not leave Ronda until three, as Charnock might have known and so behaved with dignity before Miss Holt; but he was beyond the power of argument or reflection. He hurried after Warriner and caught him up, and during the two hours of waiting, the two men kept watch and ward upon each other. Together they walked to the hotel, they lunched at the same table, they returned side by side to the station, and seated themselves side by side in the same carriage of the train. The train which takes four hours to climb to Ronda runs down that long slope of a hundred miles in two hours. Charnock and Warriner took their seats in a coupé at the end of the last carriage; they rushed suddenly into the dark straight tunnels, and saw the mouths by which they had entered as round O's of light which contracted and contracted until a mere pin's-point of sunshine was visible far away, and then suddenly they were out again in the daylight.
There were certain landmarks with which Charnock was familiar,--a precipitous gorge upon the right, an underground river which flooded out from a hillside upon the left, a white town far away upon a green slope like a flock of sheep herded together, and finally the glades of the cork forest with the gleam of its stripped tree-trunks. The train drew up at Algeciras a few minutes after five.
Charnock and Warriner were met with the statement that the Levanter of yesterday had increased in force, and by the order of the harbour-master the port of Algeciras was closed. It was impossible to make the passage to Gibraltar--and Miranda was ill. She had needed doctors, Jane Holt had said. Charnock's fears exaggerated the malady; she might be dying; she might die while he and Warriner waited at Algeciras for the sea to subside. "We must reach Gibraltar to-night," he cried.
"And before gunfire," added Warriner. "But how?"